Our last ten results on the opening day of the league season:- 2013 lost 0-4 home to Wigan, under David Flitcroft; 2014 lost 0-1 home to Crawley Town, under Danny Wilson; 2015 lost 1-3 away to Chesterfield, under Lee Johnson; 2016 lost 2-4 away to Ipswich, under Paul Heckingbottom; 2017 lost 1-3 away to Bristol City, under Paul Heckingbottom; 2018 won 4-0 home to Oxford, under Daniel Stendel; 2019 won 1-0 home to Fulham, under Daniel Stendel; 2020 lost 0-1 home to Luton, under Gerhard Struber; 2021 drew 1-1 away to Cardiff, under Markus Schopp; 2022 lost 0-1 away to Plymouth, under Michael Duff.
The last manager/head coach to win an opening day fixture, other than Daniel Stendel, was a certain Keith Hill. There's no beginning to my interesting footballing knowledge!
I've watched the extended highlights, and from what I'd read, I was expecting something similar to the Sheff Utd game. Tons of clear cut chances going begging for Plymouth, and very little to shout about from our perspective. What I actually saw was us actually creating chances, particularly from Cadden down the left. Aitchison seemed very unlucky not to get on the scoresheet, and should have had a penalty. We seemed to show a lot of energy up top, which is something I think we were missing last season. Do we need further reinforcements? Of course. We didn't seem to create much down the right, so that needs addressing. We're not creative enough in the middle of the park, even with Styles still there. We need someone who can grab the game by the scruff of the neck, and get is into dangerous areas of the pitch. A Hourihane, Mowatt, Howard style talisman. We of course need another couple of bodies up front. I expect Norwood to be our focal point when he's up to fitness, and Aitchison seems to be showing promise despite not being a natural striker. Cole won't be leading the line long term I reckon. I thought it was telling that he was withdrawn yesterday before Aitchison who is more of an AM. I do think we need to speculate and bring in someone for the long term. Luton are linked with McAtee from Grimsby for half a million, that's the sort of player we should be gambling on. I'm not saying we could compete financially with Luton, but we could offer him more of a chance of regular first team football at least. Duff eluded to Premier League teams not being willing to let players leave just yet, which says to me, we'll bolster our side with 3 or 4 loanees before the window closes. We've got the longest journey out of the way. We narrowly lost to a team who conceded just 19 goals at home last season (5 of which came in the last game of the season), and finished on 80 points, which has previously been enough for automatic promotion. There's work to be done, but there's no need to panic just yet.
There had been 39 loan signings completed by L1 clubs prior to Saturday's fixtures. 60% of these were from Premier League clubs.
There is a domino effect waiting to happen. Lots of players will move soon on loan but the parent club will want to wait until they have their new signings sorted before they release the others for loan, like what happened with us and McBurnie that time. The deal was agreed early doors but they wouldn't sign off until they had someone in which we know happened too late. Lots of clubs have players that will go out on loan but they need new ones in first. Boro for example are a prime example. Akpom, Ikpeazu and Josh Coburn are all strikers that will probably end up being loaned out but just waiting for Boro to get some of their striker targets in first. A lot of prem clubs have also been away on pre season tours and will be back in UK now so they will now be getting their young players out on loan.
Presumably the majority of those were 17-19 year olds from u17 & u19 squads. I think what Duff was eluding to, was the Premier League u21s and fringe players, who will have been taken on pre-season tours, but ultimately won't be named in the final 23 man squad (which I think PL teams still have to name). Players like Matty Longstaff for example at Newcastle. 22 year old midfielder, who I think would be a great loan capture. He's alleged to be on substantial wages at Newcastle, despite seemingly not being in their first team plans, which makes a permanent move unlikely unless a championship team are willing to take a gamble on him. Did well on loan at Mansfield last season, and has been part of Newcastle's 29 man preseason squad. He'll probably get a loan move somewhere on deadline day. I'd be delighted if it was us.
I'd say 39 are a lot already and Barnsley are one of a minority not to already have one. Say L1 clubs took an average of 3 loan players each, that's over half of the league's loan business done already. Even if L1 clubs take an average of 5 (the maximum they can include in a match) that's 120 and a third of business done already (none in Barnsley).
Extended “highlights” …. If you watch the full game, you’ll see our squad giving the ball away in dangerous areas, booting it up without thougt… and generally looking like they’ve all just met….
As Archey said, how many of those are U19s etc that might not have been of interest to us etc. We know we tried with Azaz who scored against us at the weekend but he didn't come here for whatever reasons and we may have tried for others but again they may not have wanted to join us. No point getting loans in for the sake of it. Might as well wait and get good ones that will have a good impact.
If you take our first two opponents they both already have 4 loanees each and I'd say only 1 of 8 falls into that category. 6 are 20 or over and played at L1 or above previously and 1 of the 2 19 year olds played 22 games in the Eredivisie last season. I thought Khaled had promised to reverse the slow/poor starts to the season? Spectemur Agendo and all that. I'll shut up now and wait for the jam that must now be coming tomorrow.
